In 2011 the following happened:

• Magnetic pole shift, 22 earthquakes, 11 deadly hurricanes, 5 devastating floods, 2 large volcanic eruptions, a tsunami, numerous fires, drought, and mass death of fish, birds, and marine life.
• Consumer prices rose by 30%, unemployment by 30%, divorce rate by 50%, drug usage by 50%, and suicide by 30%.

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Opinion: (Nikita N. Moiseev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences): “I hope that in the near future our teachers will have the need for the propaedeutic [preparatory study or instruction] course “Contemporary Understanding of the World.” This is due to the fact that the crisis in the relations between nature and society is growing, and the social demand for education, which is far beyond the narrow professionalism, is increasing as well.

“A modern person must see the world in its entirety. Only the understanding of ​​a general logic of the development of the world in which we live will help overcome the disastrous consequences of the relentlessly approaching crisis and perhaps even avoid it!

“Such a course should precede the studying of social sciences and philosophy, for which it is a necessary introduction. It is particularly necessary to the future experts in the humanities and social sciences, for whom the natural sciences and ecology are on the periphery of their interests.

“Future engineers and physicists also need it because the natural sciences and engineering departments lack the general knowledge about the processes of development of the contemporary world and the processes of cognition, although these professionals will have to solve many problems of modern ecology, politics, and ethics.”

My Comment: The course “Contemporary Understanding of the World” is required by everyone because the very cause of our problems is the lack of understanding of the meaning, reason, process, and purpose of life, which one can grasp only by being familiar with the structure of the world. Such a course is now being created by our organization. We hope that it will be basically completed and offered within half a year.
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In the News (from eco.ria.ru): “The world economic crisis of 2008-2009 could not slow down the growth of global emissions of greenhouse gases: After falling by 1.4% in 2009, the emissions grew by 5.9% in 2010 (33.4 billion tons of CO2-equivalent), reports Nature Climate Change magazine.

“Since 1990, …global greenhouse gas emissions increased by 49%.

“The greatest contributions were made ​​by China, USA, India, Russia, and the EU.”

My Comment: Since everything is completely interconnected in the general universe, the still, vegetative, animate, and human levels of nature mutually influence each other. Moreover, since these four parts of nature differ in the level of their development, they represent a pyramid. The still level lies at its basis, the vegetative and animate levels follow afterwards, and the top of the pyramid is occupied by our civilization due to its egoism, power, and impact.

According to the degree of impact, dependence, and effect, the levels of the pyramid are correlated in such a way that the whole force of the lowest level, that of the still, is equal to the force of the most primitive form of the next level of the pyramid, that being the most primitive plant: corals.

The whole vegetative level, the second level of the pyramid, is equal in its influence to the most primitive representative of the third level, an animal, a so-called “dog of the field,” meaning a creature that feeds from the earth through its roots like a plant, but whose organism already has the rudiments of the animal body.

And the entire third level of the pyramid, the animate, is equal in its influence to the most undeveloped form of the fourth level of the pyramid, a human being. The intermediate state between the third and fourth level is an ape.

From the above, we can understand how people affect the world and the universe without knowing it! This happens because all the parts of the pyramid are initially completely interconnected into a unified system of nature. Moreover, this effect increases with the level of human development, and the more man develops, not technically but internally, the more influence on the whole of nature he has. That’s why to the extent of our development, time of all the processes in our world is accelerating.

At the present stage of human development, nature causes our advancement and influences us and all its parts as a unified system (which, by the way, we divide into parts, but relative to nature, it’s as one whole). Through his evolution and history, man passed the stage of his inner development of desire and mind as an individual part of nature. Now, he must consciously, through his attitude towards fellow men, organize the same integral whole, as all the other parts of nature.

Therefore, we feel that our world has suddenly become global and integral, although we are not actually connected with each other so much (see the post “The Concealed Power Of Thought”). This development of nature binds us with its invisible ties more and more. And because we don’t match them, we experience our state as a crisis.

In any case, nature will break us if we resist, and if we begin to advance towards integration between ourselves and it, it will help us change ourselves.
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In the News (from BBC News): “A low-caste Dalit boy has been killed in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh for sharing a name with a man of a higher caste, police say.

“They said Neeraj Kumar’s father Ram Sumer had been asked to change the names of two sons as they were the same as those of Jawahar Chaudhary’s sons.

“The body of Neeraj, 14, was found on 23 November in a field. Two friends of the Chaudhary family have been arrested.

“Mr Chaudhary denies the involvement of his family in the murder.

“He says the family is being framed by police.

“Dalits, formerly known as ‘untouchables,’ are at the bottom of the Hindu caste system in India.

“Although caste discrimination is illegal, biases remain in many areas.”

My Comment: Is it not astonishing that people see India as a source of spirituality, love and mercy, and the ascent of the spirit above the body? But in fact, India’s society shows opposite relationships: the caste system, neglect, humiliation, and so forth. Delusion, fashion, and sweet self-deception attract people, and they want to stay in the “Indian fairy tale.”

See my talk with an Indian Guru Baba Virsa Singh Ji.
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In the News (from io9.com): “Rumors of flesh-eating bananas are resurging in Mozambique, where an email hoax is bedeviling plantain superfans. The email’s spurious medical warning advises readers to avoid bananas for three weeks, reports AFP:

“’Especially bananas from KwaZulu-Natal province in neighboring South Africa carried the virus, according to the hoax. Banana sales in the capital Maputo fell sharply despite the fact that Mozambique does not import bananas from its neighbor. In a separate statement South Africa’s agriculture ministry denounced the messages as a hoax. It strongly advised against burning the skin around the supposed infection, as suggested in the message.’

“So not only are people avoiding my favorite underrated starch (no offense, millet), but they’re being advised to light themselves on fire. …Yup, it’s time to abolish the internet yet again.”

My Comment: Humanity doesn’t realize yet how dangerous the Internet is and has not developed a unified standard approach to this media. Each and everyone is taking advantage of the Internet like they do any other media and international organizations, that is, to fulfill their personal egoistic goals as much as possible. As long as the egoism, and not us, runs our lives, suffering and danger will trouble us more and more.
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When we reach the wisdom of Kabbalah through different events in our lives, we think that the spiritual world has an external form, similar to this world’s where there are different objects that have a volume, and that there is motion and time there. This is how a person imagines the spiritual world, based on the impressions he has from this world that he is used to seeing, which is to say, that he is used to feeling. He thinks that he can feel the spiritual world this way.

In studying the wisdom of Kabbalah, we study about the “perception of reality” according to which the entire picture of reality is revealed inside our desire. All the images we see and the feeling of motion, space, time, and volume are all discernments of desire.

A certain desire gives us a feeling of time, another desire gives us a feeling of change, and a third desire gives us the feeling of volume, and so forth. Colors, sounds, height, and width all are different desires or vectors that together depict the world to us, both this world and the spiritual world.

The only difference is that in our world, we imagine that we are among figures that actually exist on the outside while in the spiritual world, we feel and understand that our internal forces are those that create reality inside us. We feel and understand this according to our control over these forces or desires.

If I don’t control the forces of my own desire, then these forces seem external as if they are not under my control. However, if I begin to control them with the help of restriction and Masachim (screens), then as a result of my attempt to control them, I reveal them as internal forces under my control.

Thus, we gradually begin to perceive the world in its true form until even this world that we are used to seeing as external is gradually felt more as an internal world that is inside us. Then, we understand how the writers of The Book of Zohar looked at reality, how they felt reality, and how they convey this to us when they describe it in this world’s words, in Kabbalistic terms, in the language of the Midrash, or morals.

Actually, all they talk about is a person’s internal forces and desires into which the Light brings all the forms and impressions. It is only about how the desires are impressed by the Light.
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From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/5/12, The Zohar

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Shamati #5 “Lishma Is An Awakening from Above, and Why Do We Need an Awakening from Below”
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The Book of Zohar – Selected Chapter “Beresheet (Genesis),” “The Two Great Lights,” Item 120, Lesson 31
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“Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot,” Item 25, Lesson 17
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Writings of Baal HaSulam “The Freedom,” “Criticism Brings Success; Lack of Criticism Causes Degeneration,” Lesson 20
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Listen to an Audio Version of the Blog
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Question: I told my mother-in-law about the wisdom of Kabbalah, about the fact that the whole world is one big family and that we are all interconnected with one another. She doesn’t study the wisdom of Kabbalah, but she understood everything. It turns out that when she was young she was part of the hippie movement and supported their ideas. Then she asked: “Does that mean that we will all be like the hippies?”

Answer: I was also young at that time and I remember these movements. Indeed the urge to be cut off from the ego, from materialism and competition, from the endless chase of material things was very strong then among young people. It isn’t by chance. They felt the emptiness in all these things very strongly then.

In those years, the Club of Rome started talking about the futility of individualistic development based on trade and technology. Many agreed with that, but eventually the “mainstream” representatives managed to somehow cover up this problem. They liquidated the connection between gold and paper money and began inflating the financial bubble.

As a result the world underwent great changes. In general, a lie is a tool to make great profit. Only today do we begin to realize what it led to and what an explosion we are facing.

So in the hippies’ times people began to ask about the meaning of life, but the question was formed gradually. They arrived at it from different directions, and so they found many answers. Some turned their eyes to India and others started devoting their time to art.

On the whole, when it comes to the masses, your mother-in-law is right. We are talking about questions that are very similar to the questions that troubled her when she was young. In our days, however, the situation is completely different. In those days, the wave that the young generation felt was broken by the achievements of technological progress that promised endless growth. Today this is impossible.

After this whole “cycle” the world has reached a general crisis, and now we will be able to continue to exist only if we tie money to real things. In other worlds, we must tie a person’s exertion to something that has a real value and not to “papers” that can be printed limitlessly or that can be duplicated “virtually.”  [Read more →]

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There was a time when money was equivalent to effort. A farmer sold eggs or milk, a shoemaker sold shoes. And their labor determined the value of things.

In contrast, today you simply need to print money and declare its purchasing power. These pieces of paper haven’t had the actual backing of their supposed value for a long time now.

At the same time, money must always be proportionate to human effort, and this is true of capitalism as well. Only nowadays those in power don’t know how to get back to this system, and some of them simply don’t want to.

One way or another, we’ll need to do this. Otherwise all things will devalue and the ensuing imbalance will destroy the global economy. Our present economic relations don’t even abide by healthy egoism, to say nothing of altruistic correction.

We’re talking about a society that follows the elementary rule, “Go and profit from one another.” Indeed, in reality we trade goods, whereas money is merely their equivalent. And that means the first thing we must do is to ensure the equivalent properly reflects the actual state of affairs. Otherwise we will plunge into chaos.

Today millions in a bank account may have a far greater real-world value. We have inflated the system with a myriad zeroes that carry no weight whatsoever.

A corrected society must be united in equality and reciprocity without rich or poor. Indeed, the eventual face of social justice entails the same standard of living for everyone regardless of any other factors. The first thing we must do is make sure everyone receives all that they need for a decent life, wanting for nothing as far as their basic needs.

In contrast, the business people of today do the exact opposite and thereby destroy whole continents for the sake of phantom profit, which they cannot even spend….
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 1/5/12, “The Freedom”

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